Some thoughts on dabbling in a non-official language in Turkey The short answer No, I don’t need to learn Kurdish, but it will make my life more fun! Some background: Using Kurdish in southeast Turkey The Kurdish language (the Kurmanji dialect, if we are being more accurate) has

Celebrating Language Diversity and Linguistic Rights Origins of International Mother Language Day Did you know that today is International Mother Language Day? In 1999, UNESCO declared that the day would be celebrated annually on February 21st in order to commemorate a 1952 student de

How are we doing? It’s been 6 months since I wrote about our bilingual goals and action plan. I’m now ready to revisit those goals and see what we’ve accomplished and what has changed since then. Bilingual To-do List Round Two 1. Decide which languages are important

A Song by Kukama Children in Defense of their Native Language This video features a beautiful song and rap by the children of Nauta, Loreto in the Peruvian Amazon about saving their native language, Kukama-Kukamiria. The children go around removing the tape that covers each other̵

How can we maintain bilingual balance? It has already started. She hasn’t even entered Kindergarten yet and she is already speaking more English than Spanish. All of a sudden my house is full of English. I find myself thinking more in English, and now that both my wife and my da

Thoughts on planning my (yet-to-exist) children’s linguistic futures My life has entered baby season. My Facebook news feed is filled with pictures of toddlers dressed up for Halloween and sitting on Santa’s lap. I’ve been spending time with a close friend’s newborn, and&

An Introduction to Runasimi Quechua (known as Runasimi, “people’s language”, in Quechua) is an Indigenous language spoken by 8-12 million people throughout South America, mainly in the Andean regions of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, as well as some speakers in Colombia

Thoughts on adding to my heritage language It’s been years since I’ve lived in my parents’ home, but—I’m slightly embarrassed to say—my childhood bedroom is still full of my old things. Recently, my parents sent me a box of stuff, mostly books, and

This post is inspired by my recent trip to Quebec, a province that intimidates me (it feels like a foreign country) and also stimulates me to live up to the bilingual potential of my Canadian identity. 1. French is the sole provincial official language in Quebec. “6,102,210 people (78

If you looked at 5 Reasons to Love Turkish you will remember that Turkish is a wonderful language to learn: it impresses native and non-native speakers alike, it is easy to pronounce, its words are generally short and memorable, and it designates no gender to nouns, or even to pronoun